


Two Roads Diverged

by aceofreaders (Kickasscookieeater)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: (super duper late), Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker soulmates, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Andreil Week 2019, Andrew Minyard has a soul, Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kevin and Andrew's relationship is important to me, M/M, Matt Boyd/Danielle 'Dan Wilds soulmates, Mentions of Baltimore, Nicky Hemmick/Erik Klose soulmates, Nightmares (mentioned), Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Canon, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Wholesome Twinyards, minor depressive episode, panic attack (non-explicit), possibly dissociative episode (non-explicit), sharp boys being soft, soulmates by choice, wedding scene (Nicky and Erik)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kickasscookieeater/pseuds/aceofreaders
Summary: You’re not born with the name. It happens when it’s right with the right person.There’s a certain predisposition towards souls who are inherently well matched to yours, just a little bit of destiny. A pull to a soul matched best to yours that tugs you both to the same time and place eventually.But ultimately you get to choose.Yes or no.The problem is that Andrew Minyard doesn’t believe in choice. Not exactly. Not this one.Not until Neil.





	Two Roads Diverged

**Author's Note:**

> alt title: Neilachu, I choose you!  
> actual title: taken from Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken'.
> 
> Originally, I wrote this for Andreil Week 2019 under the prompt 'tattoo', but it got away from me and I had big deadlines that took a lot of time and energy, and I missed it which makes me very sad. But it got done in the end, and I hope you like it!
> 
> shesdangerace on tumblr <3

You’re not born with the name. It happens when it’s right with the right person. 

Not just anyone can be your soulmate of course. There’s a certain predisposition towards souls who are inherently well matched to yours, just a little bit of destiny. Fate or something. A pull to a soul matched best to yours that tugs you both to the same time and place eventually. 

But ultimately you get to choose. Ultimately, your soul decides whether this is your soulmate or not and once it’s made up its mind that’s it. Their name is branded on your skin like a tattoo, permanent, souls tied to each other forever. Pulled back together every time. Magnets. 

Soulmates.

The problem is that Andrew Minyard doesn’t believe in choice. Not exactly.

Well, there are many problems, but this is the one he thinks about every now and then when the other problems are too difficult to think of.

Andrew thinks choice is stupid. As a concept and as a way of describing your actions. Because no he did not have a choice not to cut the brakes. He had to. No he did not have a choice not to hide the truth from her. He had to. No he did not have a choice not to beat those men that night. He had to. 

He could choose his fucking latte order or his socks that day but the big things. The big choices weren’t really choices they were necessities.

And it wasn’t like they ever gave him a choice over what happened to him. Not the drugs or the game or the prison or the hands.

So no. Andrew Minyard doesn’t believe in choice. He doesn’t believe in much else either. 

\---

Nothing happens. 

For either of them really. Not for a long time. 

But there are times before, when it could have maybe. There’s an itch under the skin of his right forearm that day on the rooftop, hidden beneath the black of his armband. He’s clean and sober and freshly aching and there’s a fucking itch and Neil’s voice saying such stupid shit. 

Saying he did it for Andrew. 

“If it means losing you, then no.”

His voice is so firm and his eyes are so blue and his hair looks like fire and his body like horror and Andrew doesn’t recognise either of them anymore.

Because Neil looks honest.

And because there’s that itch still.

Andrew is almost tempted to look but he’s not that stupid.

There’s nothing there to see in the shower later anyway.

\---

It can be a gradual process. It can show up like a shadow first before it turns to stark black ink like a tattoo. 

Apparently, the soul can hesitate. 

That’s how it happens for Nicky.

It’s not because of Erik he says. It’s because he hated himself. It’s because he thought deep inside where his soul must live that they might be right. He was wrong and twisted and unnatural. He thought he couldn’t have a soulmate if his soul was corrupt.

It was Erik who showed him otherwise. Erik who showed him tenderness and safety and understanding. It was Erik who showed him he deserved a soulmate, and when Nicky’s soul chose him it made perfect sense. It was inevitable. Hardly a choice at all.

Nicky says all this, and then he tells Andrew to write it down for him because he wants to say it at all again at his wedding one day.

Andrew does no such thing. 

\---

It keeps not happening. For a long while.

But everything else happens.

Neil’s lips, his tongue, his breaths, his heartbeat, his bare skin and his scars under Andrew’s hands. His eyes unflinching from Andrew’s. Over over and over again. Exy. Promises Andrew won’t break. Trades and deals and cars.

But it’s still nothing.

It’s nothing.

It’s nothing but he’s on the bus with Neil. Well, he’s on the bus and Neil happens to be there too. He’s sat in front of Andrew, twisted in his seat to look back at him, and Neil is glowing just a tiny bit. 

The sun from the windows and the shadows around him are painting Neil like something otherworldly. Auburn hair lit by the sun, rays of light across the left side of his face over his tattoo, cheekbones cutting diagonal shapes, eyes burning blue. 

Hands dangling over the sides of his chair. 

Painfully present and absolutely unearthly.

They’re on that bus together for hours. Sometimes the light passes right through the blue of Neil’s eyes and turns them almost translucent and his face aglow. Sometimes the light leaves him altogether and he is just a shadow. 

When Andrew agrees finally to break their promise he feels that itch again. 

But this time he can’t tell if it’s just the skin of his arm or if it’s the very bones beneath.

He plays the game like he never has before.

\---

There are a great many people, TV shows, movies, books, whatever, that describe the sight of your name on the arm of your soulmate as a gift. Something beautiful and pure. A rescue. Hope. 

That’s how Matt tells it. He catches Neil one day after practice, staring at ‘Danielle Wilds’ in bold black on his left forearm, eyes all stormy and distant. Clinical. Assessing. 

Matt tells Neil and by extension Andrew that he used to look at the bare skin of his arms and promise himself that one day he’d find her. That one day she’d choose him too. One day he’d have proof. Proof that he’s not a failure, not a lost cause, not dead. Proof he had a soul still. 

He says once it finally happened, like he knew it would with Dan, it wasn’t about him at all. It was a privilege to bear her name. He says that when he saw his name on her arm, that’s when it hit him. He was worth something after all. He must be if Danielle Wilds with a soul to match her name chose him. He had a soul and it was a worthy one. 

The first time Andrew saw his name on someone else’s arm the last name was different and it was nothing like that.

It was cold the night Drake crawled over him with Andrew’s name on his skin. He was whispering. Begging. Demanding.

Choose me AJ.

Why won’t you choose me?

Choose me too. Please AJ.

It took him too long to realise that the stains on his fingers were sharpie ink, his name in smudges.

Andrew didn’t believe in choice and soulmates were just a nightmare made real.

When Neil disappears, Andrew is more certain of that than ever. 

He does not want a soulmate. 

Who needs a soul at all if this is what it would feel like.

\---

In the hotel room that night there’s nothing on Andrew’s skin but scars. Nothing on Neil’s skin but burns, cuts, bruises, scrapes, agony.

Andrew can see nothing else but that. He feels an itch deeper than skin. In his blood. His marrow. He feels fury, fear like a constant echo in his hollowed-out bones. 

He feels. 

It’s awful.

There’s no room for anything else.

His focus lands on Neil like a magnetic pull and will not be torn away.

And nothing happens that next night, surrounded by Foxes, eyes wide open and lungs barely breathing.

And it doesn’t happen when he pushes the knife against Kevin’s knee in the diner, a familiar action with a different target and a foreign motive. It doesn’t happen in the cabin, arm under Neil’s pillow, closer than he thought he could ever bring himself to get in the dark.  


And Andrew doesn’t notice. 

He doesn’t think about it at all. 

He doesn’t think about the fact that Neil’s name is legal now. Real.

He doesn’t think about the fear he felt that night as he tore through the stadium. Or the fact that it’s still there just muted in the quiet. 

He doesn’t think about choice.

He really doesn’t.

Those thoughts come later.

\---

“I wasn’t ready.” Renee had told him one night, both of them lying flat on their backs on the mat and the power gone out. 

Maybe that’s why she said it.

“I didn’t think I deserved her. I didn’t think I was good enough yet.” she says. Voice quiet like she’s alone.

“I think it was only after I let go of those thoughts that my soul felt free to choose.” she says.

She never says her name. She doesn’t have to. Andrew knew who dyed the hair Renee is twirling between her fingers when the power comes back on. Andrew knew who she was with in that moment and he was not Renee. 

Andrew knows whose name is under Renee’s sleeve and he knows it three months before Seth dies. 

Now, Renee is gone searching for Jean. And Allison, still poised and cutting, closes her hand tight around the sleeve of her left arm and doesn’t let go.

\---

Aaron is angry and Andrew is trying to prove some kind of point to them both by sitting here on this rooftop alone.

Aaron wants the promise broken.

Aaron wants the promise broken or Neil gone.

Andrew must decide.

He thinks Andrew won’t do it. That there’s no way he’d break their promise for Neil.

He knows Neil thinks that too.

He knows _he_ might have except for how when the ultimatum broke the air between the two brothers it hit Andrew like a blow and sank him. 

Now he’s sat with his legs hanging off the edge of the roof and his cigarette between his lips. 

He looks at the chasm of ground below and imagines being here alone every night. No auburn hair or smug smiles or words like steel, like silk, no Abram or sunrise but still death. 

He remembers when he was alone every night and every day.

He looks up at the star strewn sky above him and thinks about Neil Abram Josten the Real Boy.

He thinks about Neil and his knife smile, his gentle kisses and his hungry ones, his body sleeping safely where Andrew left him.

He thinks about his death wish and his desperate will to live.

He thinks about pipe dreams, protecting only to end up protected in return. 

Baltimore. 

He thinks about brothers and mothers and cars and silences and more silences and resentment and hatred and blood splatter. 

He thinks about instincts and how they rarely lie like people do. 

He thinks of a name on a girl’s arm that she tried to hide.

Then he goes back downstairs and crawls into bed and sees Neil’s face behind his eyelids when he closes his eyes.

The next day he breaks the deal.

\---

That’s when it happens. 

But just a little bit.

It’s not even a name really. More of a trick of the light.

It looks like Andrew Minyard may have a soul after all.

\---

No one is ever hurting Neil again. This is not going to fucking happen.

So he swings the racket.

It’s a necessity. A foregone conclusion. A decision he thinks he may have made a long time ago.

And later when they’re kissing and Neil’s smart mouth is still moving, breaths mingling and eyes meeting, he knows. 

He knows that if he took off his arm band and moved his arm just right, he’d see that barely there trick of the light and he just cannot deny it.

This is not nothing.

He doesn’t know what to do with that.

But there is no going back now.

\---

It’s been a month since their grand victory.

He’s thinking about names. Thinking about the one he saw on his twins’ pale skin just this morning. Look at them, heartless but not soulless. Maybe that’s not fair. Maybe it’s just him. Bee wouldn’t think so. Andrew doesn’t care.

He’s with Neil. And Nicky and Aaron and Kevin who seems beside himself with stress. He keeps yelling stats at Neil that Andrew keeps trying not to remember, and Neil keeps calmly telling Kevin to fuck off he’s eating. He’s not. 

Neil has left his chocolate pastry completely untouched, unattended, and suspiciously close to Andrew. Neil himself is suspiciously not close to Andrew. 

Andrew is feeling different today. Not the same. A little bit worse. Nothing dramatic. Just a couple centimetres off centre. 

But the chocolate tastes good on his tongue and watching Kevin wind himself up ever tighter helps.

Nicky tries to steal a bite from Neil’s paper plate and Neil’s marred hand slaps him away in the same breath.

He thinks about names some more.

-

That night Neil is lying in the bunk below Andrew. He knows if he asked him to climb the shitty steps up to the top bunk he would. He knows he won’t unless he’s asked to. 

He knows that he could ask Neil for a kiss and almost certainly receive it. Knows Neil would ask him for one in return and Andrew would say yes but he could just as well say no. 

He knows he could give permission to be touched and the hands would be reverent and grateful. Knows he could withhold permission entirely and there’d be no hands at all.

\---

He's watching Neil from the window as he runs back up to Fox Tower. Andrew’s arms are dangling out over the window pane, cigarette burning away, head leaning on his arm. 

There’s just enough sunlight left to light Neil’s hair on fire. 

“Kevin you’re a fucking asshole.”

He looks tired.

“You’re not even trying Nicky.”

He looks like he’s been inside his own head for too long.

“Fuck you I am too trying! I’m trying and you’re just being an asshole.”

Andrew can see his scars from here.

“If you’re trying so hard then why are you still losing so hard?” 

That’s probably because Neil is underneath the window now.

“Here’s an idea Aaron, why don’t you go do something gross and heterosexual with Katelyn and stop being a dick.”

He’s staring up at Andrew like he’s the first thing he’s truly seen in days.

“Video games bring out something dark in you.”

Andrew lets his cigarette fall all the way down to the ground at Neil’s feet.

“Et tu Matthew?”

Neil picks it up, smiles up at Andrew with the cigarette between his teeth.

“I’m just saying this is an ugly side of you.”

Neil lets the cigarette drop again and puts it out with his sneaker. Looks up, past Andrew, then back down with his eyebrow raised in askance.

“ _Fuck!_ ”

Andrew backs away from the window until he can’t see anything out of it but sky. 

“God you are so bad at this game.”

He doesn’t have to go.

“I was distracted!”

He leaves his cigarettes behind when he leaves.

-

Despite himself, Andrew has made Neil laugh twice. He’s kissed him countless times.

Kissed him until he was present again. 

Kissed him until he was all Andrew could taste.

Kissed him until he couldn’t anymore and then he looked at Neil’s eyes up close and they were so soft and ringed with grey on the outside.

He tangles their fingers together and feels Neil’s heartbeat in his own blood.

He doesn’t have to, but he kisses him harder.

\---

“Do you believe in soulmates Bee?”

She takes a sip of her hot chocolate before answering.

“What are you really asking me?”

He takes a sip of his own hot chocolate.

“Do you think we really get to choose?”

She puts the hot chocolate down.

“I think we get to choose before our souls do. I think they follow our lead.”

Then she looks at him in that way he hates.

“Andrew, you have a choice. We all do. We can choose who we give our time too, our attention, our affection. Our protection. Our trust. And when it’s really truly right then we make that final choice. Sometimes our souls just know before our consciousness does.”

He thinks about that for a minute. And then another. And then another. 

Bee picks up her hot chocolate again and waits. 

“I’m not used to having a choice.”

Her eyes are warm and her tone is gentle when she says:

“But you’re getting there.”

\---

It’s late springtime now and summer is creeping in.

Neil is asleep with his head on the desk. There’s a textbook crease surely forming on his most scarred cheek. The curl of hair that’s escaped his hood is shifting in the breeze from the open window.

He has a math thing tomorrow.

Neil is oddly good at math like he is at many things. He’s an idiot but he is by no means stupid. 

But he’s still not used to long term consequences. 

Andrew has been not studying for an hour now while Neil slept. He’s nursing a coffee with three sugars on the couch. 

Neil doesn’t stir. He is so still but for that one stray curl and Andrew finds himself staring it for longer then he thinks he realises.

He could wake Neil up. It wouldn’t take much. He could steal the unopened peanut butter flavoured protein bar Dan left behind for him two hours ago. He could let Neil eat it. He could push the curl back under the hood. 

He could let him sleep. 

That’s when Nicky comes quietly in and Neil wakes up.

Between one second and the next Neil is abruptly alert. He is somehow even stiller. When Nicky puts a black coffee down next to his head his shoulders relax. 

He sits up and scrubs the heels of his palms against his eyes and yes, there is indeed a textbook crease on his face. 

He smiles blearily up at Nicky and Nicky pushes his hood back to ruffle his hair. Neil chuffs at him and swats his hand away but he’s not really trying. He’s mostly trying to open the protein bar. 

Andrew goes to the kitchen. Rummages through the snack cupboard.

“Hey Neil, how about a pop quiz?”

He’s knows there’s one in here somewhere.

“What, now?”

He could just not bother.

“Yes now.”

Found it. 

“Sure, why not.”

The protein bar is a second away from Neil’s mouth when Andrew snatches it out of his hand and takes a bite. 

Nicky is struck by horror but Neil’s bleary smile follows Andrew all the way to the dorm room door, even when a blueberry flavoured protein bar hits him in the head.

-

And yet Neil still complains later. He says that Andrew still tastes like fake peanut butter, his least favourite flavour, and his nose scrunches all the way up when he says it.

\---

He’s not sure when it happens exactly, sometime between kisses and exy practices and nights at Eden’s. 

But one day, the day summer starts, heat steaming out of the cracks in the concrete, it’s there. 

A shadow. But clearly a name. 

Neil Abram Josten. 

\---

Kevin is the first and so far the only one to know.

They’re at the house in Columbia a week later, surrounded by Nicky and Aaron passed out on the floor and Neil asleep at Andrew’s feet in front of the couch. 

Andrew can see the crown of his auburn hair, darker in the lamp light of the room. Everything smells like alcohol but him. 

And Andrew shows Kevin. 

He doesn’t seem to realise what’s happening as Andrew rolls up his sleeve, sat in silence next to Andrew on the couch. But when he starts tugging off his right armband Kevin sits up at attention and there it is. Just about visible in the light.

Kevin doesn’t say a word. He tugs at his own sleeve almost unconsciously and looks at Andrew. Something in his eyes looks relieved. Stunned. Grateful. Proud.

Andrew tugs his armband back on and the night passes them both by until sunrise.

\---

Andrew walks around with Neil’s shadow all summer long.

Hidden. 

No matter how hot it gets the armband never budges.

No matter how wide Neil smiles, how softly he laughs, how stupid he talks.

Andrew keeps his shadow to himself.

\---

Summer is at its end, the season is starting soon, everyone is back in the dorms full time. The new Foxes are angsting somewhere but Andrew doesn’t care.

They’re watching a movie. All of them. Rather, they’re trying to pick one to watch. 

Andrew lets them squabble.

Neil is on the beanbag next to Andrew’s, on his right. Kevin is on the couch to Andrew’s left. Aaron is next to Kevin, Nicky is on the floor next to Neil.

All accounted for. 

The lights are low, but not so low that he couldn’t see the relaxed cut of Neil’s jaw and the slump of his shoulders if he chose to look.

Allison wants a period drama, Dan wants an action film, Matt wants a romcom, Renee wants peace and quiet. 

Nicky stops trying to choo-choo train popcorn at Neil to say:

“How about a horror? Something supernatural, you know, monsters and shit.”

Allison sneers when she replies. 

“I think the monster we have is enough.”

She doesn’t say it particularly loudly, but the flit of her eyes is loud enough.

He watches Neil’s body go taut, his jaw set, his eyes narrow. His voice when he snaps reverberates in Andrew’s rib cage.

“Fuck you Allison.”

Andrew doesn’t care what people think of him.

“Neil-“

But Neil Josten does.

“How many times do I have to fucking say it?”

He cares about how people talk to Andrew.

“It was a joke-“

He cares about how people treat Andrew.

“Not to me.”

These people are Neil’s family.

“I’m sorry Neil.”

And that’s a heavy word for broken things like them.

“Don’t apologise to me.”

He would fight them all for Andrew.

“I’m sorry Andrew.” 

It doesn’t mean anything to him, but it means something to Neil. 

He nods his slow ascent and goes back to eating his ice cream. 

Neil has given Andrew his protection quite a few times by now. He’s never asked for it and he’s not asking for it now. 

It was not Andrew’s choice to be protected, but apparently it was Neil’s to protect him.

You spend all this time watching our backs. Who’s watching yours? 

Huh.

Nicky goes back to gingerly pushing popcorn at Neil until the tension breaks.

They pick a movie eventually.

Andrew thinks about all the choices Neil has made. All the choices he’s been making. All the choices he makes again and again and never flinches from.

For the first time, Andrew lets himself think about the scarred skin of Neil’s arm and what might be written on it. 

\---

Renee is holding Allison’s hand. 

It wasn’t easy for Allison. Andrew knows this because he’s not stupid nor is he oblivious. 

It wasn’t easy for Renee either. 

Andrew knows this because she told him.

But here they are. Allison is standing there with Renee’s name on her left arm and Seth’s number on her right wrist. 

At the time, when Allison was still freshly grieving and Renee was holding her with a look of guilt and aching on her face that Andrew couldn’t process properly until the drugs were gone, he thought it didn’t seem like much of a choice for them.

Maybe it was just a hard one.

Maybe it was a hard one but the right one.

\---

They’re not doing anything but driving. 

They’re just in the Maserati speeding through the late autumn midnight, Andrew behind the wheel and Neil next to him and their hands tangled together.

It’s a new thing. 

New means something a little bit different for them. New means it happened slowly and carefully and stayed that way for a little while and now it’s mostly normal.

The air through their cracked open windows is just a little cold but they like to feel the night on their skin.

“Can I kiss you?”

Neil’s voice is quiet and unafraid. 

“I’m driving you idiot. You want to crash and kill us both?”

Andrew’s voice is barely louder than Neil’s.

“I meant here.”

And then he squeezes Andrew’s hand lightly. 

Andrew thinks for a moment. 

About affection.

What it means for sharp boys to gift someone something soft.

He says yes.

Neil lifts their hands slowly up to his lips and Andrew can feel his breath against the back of his hand, his shaky exhale. 

When Neil’s lips meet Andrew’s skin they’re so soft it almost hurts.

It’s a slow and tender thing. Gentle. It’s completely alien to Andrew. 

It’s alien to Neil too. 

It’s simple affection.

He looks as shaken by it as Andrew’s foundations are.

There’s nothing simple about it. 

An awful certainty is settling in his stomach by the time Neil drops their hands back down by the gearshift.

While Neil showers in the house in Columbia that night, Andrew peels his black armband away and he is right.

\---

For some unknown reason, it doesn’t feel as much like flying as he assumed it would. Maybe he’s growing or something. Maybe he’s just had time to adjust already. It did take its time after all.

It stands out against his scars to such a degree that they’re almost secondary to the black of the ink. Like they’re threaded through. 

Like the ink has bled into them. 

It can’t erase them. It doesn’t try too. 

They blend together and sometimes, in certain light, Neil’s name is all Andrew can see.

\---

“Is there a possibility that they won’t choose you back?”

After all this time, Bee is pretty good at figuring out the topic of conversation without Andrew having to say it if he doesn’t want to.

“Sometimes yes. It happens. But it’s rare. Souls are usually already tied before it happens, like a mutual consideration of each other. It’s complicated. Not an exact science.”

He ponders this for a moment and then they move on. 

He almost shows her.

He doesn’t, but Bee is perceptive and he’s fairly certain he doesn’t need to.

\---

There’s one night when they’re standing on opposite ends of the court to each other, victorious, that Andrew considers asking to look. 

Neil is looking all the way down the court at him, all muscles and veins and power, strong hand on his racket head titled back breath almost gone smile ferocious. 

He wants to ask why he hasn’t seen his bare skin since that one desperate shower. 

Neil walks through the Foxes even as they tug at his uniform and lands at Andrew’s goal. He’s still holding onto his racket and Andrew watches a bead of sweat travel down his now bare throat. 

His chest is heaving. He’s teeming with life. Full of glory and pride. 

“You played an incredible game.”

Pride for Andrew.

“A game that’s over now. I’m done. Can you be too so I can leave this god forsaken goal?”

“Are you waiting for me?”

Yes.

“Don’t be stupid, you’re in my way.”

“You’re not as good of a liar as you think you are.”

I used to be.

“You’re not as smart as you think you are.”

“I’m exactly as smart as I think I am.”

“And how smart is that?”

“Smart enough to know you’re a liar.”

He’s an idiot.

“Just go.”

\---

Andrew is watching two soulmates holding hands. One of them is pointing at everything in New York City and the other is ignoring it all to stare at them. One of them happens to be Nicky. The other happens to be Erik Klose.

Andrew presses his nose deeper into his scarf.

They’re in NYC, obviously, visiting Matt who is guiding Neil through all the “good shit the tourists don’t know about”.

Kevin is with Thea and her family for Christmas. Aaron is with Katelyn. 

Apparently, Neil Josten’s Grand Tour of the USA and Other Countries stopped here for a little while. He walks the streets like someone who’s done it before, blends into the crowds like he knows where he’s going. He moves like a phantom. 

Mostly though he’s just there with them, listening to Matt’s every word and laughing when Dan calls Matt a hipster. Walking next to Andrew. 

And then it starts to snow. Cold and slow.

They come to a standstill after a while. Somewhere quiet, for the city, and let themselves experience the cold. Nicky ends up throwing a shitty excuse for a snowball at Matt, and then Matt throws one at Erik in revenge, and it all dissolves from there. 

Andrew steers well clear. So does Neil. 

He stands a little separate from them all. The snow falls around him and dusts the stray curls of his hair, his body a polaroid standing against the cold in his black coat and forest green knit hat. Face tipped up towards the sky. Eyes closed. Nose flushed a little bit pink on the end. 

Dan snaps the picture he makes. 

Hands it over to Andrew in a Christmas card on Christmas day. 

Andrew blinks at her until she stops looking at him.

\---

In the end Andrew waits for Neil until early February.

They’re alone in the dorms, everyone else scattered doing other things and visiting other people. It’s somewhere around 2 in the morning and they’ve been in the living space. On the bean bags, to be more precise. 

Neil is warm and soft next to him, his lips freshly bitten. 

And then he gets up and leaves without a word.

When he comes back he’s out of his hoodie, in his sleep t-shirt that used to be Matt’s, and his arms are bare. 

And Andrew can see it. 

The lights are mostly off, but Andrew can see it. All of Neil’s scars and Andrew’s name printed against them. 

Neil settles back into his beanbag chair, legs spilling over onto the carpet, arms loose, and doesn’t say a word. 

Neither does Andrew. 

They’re just looking at each other. Neil’s eyes are defiant even in the dark. There’s a set to his jaw that says he’s uncertain but an arch to his brow that says he is unrepentant. 

He can still see his name on Neil’s skin, Neil’s choice and he’s chosen him, and Andrew knows this kind of permanence must still terrify Neil. 

But there it is. On his right arm.

Andrew Joseph Minyard. 

This should be both of their nightmares.

“Neil.”

It’s all Andrew can do. 

“I know Andrew.”

“Neil.”

“I’m not scared.”

“I thought you’d stopped lying?”

“I have. I’m not scared of you.”

“So you’re still a liar _and_ you still have shitty self-preservation instincts.”

“I have never been safer Andrew.”

Fuck.

“Shut up.”

“And you think _I_ haven’t changed.”

“Yes or no Neil?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Say it Neil.”

Neil leans forward, close but not there yet, heat just reaching Andrew. It sets Andrew ablaze.

“Yes.”

So Andrew kisses him. Pushes him down into the beanbag chair.

He places one of Neil’s hands underneath his shirt and feels it against his skin, heat seeping into his ribcage from Neil’s fingertips. His other hand ends up placed in Andrew’s hair and when Andrew nods Neil tugs just a little bit. 

Neil Abram Josten, a name made flesh beneath him. Arm in full view still. Tiny little stuttered sounds. Heartbeat under Andrew’s hands almost loud as Andrew’s own. 

He doesn’t ask when it happened, or how long it’s been there. It’s inconsequential really.

He kisses him until they both fall asleep. 

\---

It’s just. Confronting. 

Strange. 

Troubling maybe. 

To know definitively that he has a soul. That his soul is capable of things Andrew didn’t think possible, and that means Andrew is too because they are one and the same. To see his own name on someone else’s arm and not feel immediately ill.

Maybe that’s why it took Neil so long. Maybe he was waiting too.

“I’m not as scared as I thought I’d be.” he tells Bee. 

“Good. I don’t you think need to be scared at all. I know he’s determined, and loyal. I know what he’s done for you.”

“What do I do now?” he asks. 

“If you’re ready, return the favour.”

\---

But he doesn't. 

\---

“What are you afraid of?”

Sat together on the benches of the Foxhole Court, Kevin’s voice echoes just a little bit in the cavernous silence.

“Nothing Kevin.”

It’s dark in the court, only a few of the lights left on. 

“We both know what’s written on his arm Andrew.”

He cuts his eyes to Kevin, who stares calmly back at him and says:

“I’m not stupid. He asked me about Thea, whether she had mine too. He was tense, on edge. It didn’t take a genius.”

Except it did. It took someone who knew Neil. Someone who knew Andrew.

“How did you get so bold?” he asks. He never used to be able to do this. 

“Him.”

Of course.

“So I’ll do what he would do and ask you again. What are you afraid of?”

Falling.

“It’s none of your business.”

“You’re both my business. This game is my business.” he says, eyes sweeping over his plexiglass kingdom full of power. Then he turns those eyes on Andrew. 

“You can pretend all you want but we both know that’s what you’re doing.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Yes I do. What are you waiting for?”

“I could answer that question or I could just choke you out again if you like?”

Kevin sighs. Silence falls back over the court, and all the way up in the bleachers Andrew could swear the air is thinner. Maybe that’s why he says:

“I don’t know.”

Kevin, despite all his bravado, looks surprised still. He blinks at Andrew. Contemplates him.

“You’ve faced down so much worse than this one good thing Andrew.” 

The air is definitely thinner up here. Because Kevin sounds full of authority and honesty and Andrew almost believes him.

\---

Under the right circumstances, Neil in the morning sun is a soft and slow thing. It’s hard for him not to wake up alert, suddenly and sharply. But when everything is truly quiet and no one is moving and Andrew is there, Neil can take his time. And he does. Every once in a while.

Looking at him now in the weak morning light, edges still sanded smooth from sleep, blinking blearily at Andrew, he can hear Kevin and Bee in his head and he can think, maybe. 

Maybe.

\---

A few days later Andrew leaves the shower and doesn’t put his armbands back on. He sits crossed legged against the wall of the bed and waits.

When Neil comes back from his evening run five minutes later he does what he always does and looks for Andrew. 

He can hear his name being called, quietly and only once. And then Neil’s head peaks past the door and he smiles. Moves straight to Andrew like he’s being pulled. Maybe he is. 

“Hey.”

This he says even quieter, calm and sated from running, ease in every inch of his body as he climbs up the ladder and waits there. It takes him only seconds to notice and Andrew knows the second he does because he can see Neil start to shatter. 

His grip goes tight on the ladder, his breath catches in his throat, he stares almost unseeingly for a moment at Andrew’s right arm. He’s clearly not going anywhere on his own any time soon so Andrew hooks his fingers into his collar and tugs Neil the rest of the way up. Neil just kneels in front of him. Strung up all tight. Staring into Andrew’s eyes now.

He’s checking Neil’s pupils, listening to his breathing, when Neil finally speaks.

“Andrew?”

“Yes.”

Neil’s forehead meets Andrew’s and their noses brush together. When Neil closes his eyes Andrew feels it. 

He lets his hand fall to the back of Neil’s neck.

“Andrew are you-“

“Yes.”

\---

Andrew is aware that there is a part of Neil that wants to scream from the rooftops that Andrew Minyard has a soul and fuck anyone who says otherwise. 

He is aware of just how much Neil hates it when people call Andrew a monster, when they call him a sociopath, even if it happens less now. It happened a lot more at the beginning, before they realised neither Andrew nor Neil were letting go. 

But still. Neil hates it. Must hate it even more when he’s sat there with Andrew’s name on his skin, his own on Andrew’s. 

So yes, there is a part of Neil that undoubtedly wants the world to see. But most of him doesn’t. Because it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or what anyone else knows because it’s none of their business and it’s not for them. 

And no matter how many times he could have, Neil never shows anyone else.

Andrew’s name is safe with Neil.

\---

Matt figures it out though.

This much is obvious. 

There’s a very good chance he’s known for a while. Putting together all the jagged puzzle pieces they’ve been leaving behind.

They’re getting coffee as they often are. They have the same morning class schedule on Tuesdays and it’s fine. Matt is looking straight at Andrew as they wait, assessing, unintimidated by the blankness of Andrew’s stare. Flits his eyes in Neil’s direction, tilts his chin up at Andrew. The look in his eyes is defiant, a challenge, a warning. Knowing. 

Huh. Observant that one. He’s just quiet about it. It reminds Andrew of someone, someone equally as good at seeing your secrets. 

Said someone is chewing his hoodie string between his sharp canines like an animal. Matt yanks one and laughs riotously at the affronted look on Neil’s face. 

And when Neil’s screaming nightmares come again that March Matt comes to find Andrew. 

It’s the middle of the afternoon and Andrew is in the library when he comes storming in.

The look on his face is all Andrew needs to know. 

He finds Neil locked in the bathroom with the lights off. Nicky is begging Neil to open the door, telling Andrew that he was napping and then suddenly he was screaming in his sleep and then he ran when Nicky touched him. 

Andrew tells him to get the fuck out of his way. 

“Neil. Open the door.”

He hears silence for moment. Then the click of the lock and Andrew is in. 

Andrew holds Neil’s neck, tells him to stop, tells him to breathe, doesn’t let go. Tears off his armband and lets Neil hold onto the name they both know is written there until it’s safe to turn the lights on. Let's Neil hold on until he can repeat that name back to Andrew.

And when it’s over and they’re on the couch later that night and Neil is sleeping with his head on Andrew’s shoulder, Matt looks at him from his place on Neil’s other side and nods at Andrew. 

And that’s that.

\---

Summer rolls around again and they’re alone in Columbia.

When they’re alone their scars are safe. And their names are too. 

Neil looks at his name on Andrew’s skin in the light of the rising sun, like it’s a holy relic. He looks at Andrew like he himself is holy and golden. Sighs ever so slightly into Andrew’s mouth. 

They sit together with their coffees on the couch as the light peers in through the windows, and Andrew looks at the mottled remains of the burns on Neil’s arms. Then he stops. Looks at the mark of Andrew’s name there instead. 

Andrew Joseph Minyard.

Sometimes, when they’re alone like this, he looks at his name there and he looks at Neil Abram Josten on his own and he thinks about how awful it should all be. It should be a wound, it should be a dagger to the heart, it should be a death bell ringing in his ears. 

It should be dangerous. 

And it is a little bit. 

But it’s not really at all anymore. 

When he first met Neil Abram Josten that was not his name and he was nothing but a threat. A problem at best.

When he met Neil Abram Josten again, more sober than he’d been in a long time, he was a problem then too. 

And now. 

He looks at Neil Abram Josten on his own skin and it’s not a brand. It’s a promise. 

\---

Eventually summer ends. 

Time keeps pushing on. 

They win countless games, piss off countless people, start countless fights, lose Foxes and gain Foxes and Neil mourns each one gone and trains each one that comes. Andrew is there through it all. 

Season after season through rain fall and light snow fall and leaves growing and heat scorching. 

And eventually.

Andrew’s time at Palmetto ends too.

\---

It’s the night before Andrew leaves for Boston. 

The night air cools the house and they’re in bed. Neil is running his fingertips over Andrew’s arm where it rests between them on the pillow. 

The sun will be rising soon. 

Neil isn’t saying anything. He’s just staring at Andrew’s arm, Andrew’s face, into Andrew’s eyes. 

It’s so still. Everything. Everything except for Neil’s careful fingers and the storms raging in his eyes.

Andrew kisses him because he can’t look at him anymore. He touches him until he sighs, until he whispers Andrew’s name into his ear, until he can’t say anything at all anymore. He presses them together with their hands entwined above Neil’s head so tightly their names meet with their skin.

Neil kisses Andrew over and over and over and he’s slow and he’s full of heat and his eyes are still storms. 

Their names stay melded together.

The sun rises.

\---

The cold sneaks underneath Andrew’s layers and turns his bones to ice. 

It’s been an annoying day of practice. Long and tedious. The walk home from the bus stop is a relief. It’s the first quiet he’s had all day. 

His skin isn’t fitting right. 

Snow crunches under his dark boots and he thinks for a second about the sound it makes and then blocks all sound out of his head. 

He just.

The wind brushes against his cheeks. 

It’s just.

Too cold.

He doesn’t fit into himself right and his name is starting to sound like noise. 

It’s been said so many times today. 

It’s stopped meaning anything. 

It’s all just noise and noise and noise and he keeps walking home. 

The sound of the snow breaks through again and Andrew almost flinches despite himself. 

The soft lining of his coat is starting to hurt the skin it touches. 

It isn’t fitting right. 

He thinks he hears his name on the wind but it’s just more noise.

The warmth of the lobby burns him where he used to be cold but it doesn’t quite reach his bones like the frigid air did. 

He gets the elevator to the top floor, puts his key in the lock and his second key in the second lock and the metal makes his hand feel dirty.

He runs a shower of lukewarm water and stares at the water passing over his skin. 

Stares at the name written on it. 

Gets out however long later and dries off and picks up the phone just to put it back down.

Sits in the quiet for a while.

Is alone. 

Old habits die hard. 

Eventually he gets up, when the cold just keeps getting colder and turns the thermostat up an extra degree. 

Goes to the kitchen. 

Passes by a photo on the mantel piece. 

Body a polaroid, eyes closed and dusted with snow, black coat green knit hat, face tilted up towards the sky. 

Nose pink. 

He makes his hot chocolate, more marshmallows than necessary.

Sits on the couch. 

Old habits die hard, but they can still die. 

“Andrew.”

Neil’s voice doesn’t sound like noise. It sounds like Neil’s voice saying his name.

\---

Andrew Minyard is not a sentimental person by any means. 

But every now and again he sits on his balcony and looks down at Neil Abram Josten. Looks up at the dark sky of midnight and feels the ink and scars beneath his fingertips. 

Neil Josten is not a particularly sentimental person either. Well, he’s more so than he used to be. Moreso than Andrew. But regardless, he sits on Andrew’s couch and does the same. 

He tells Andrew truths. 

“She never had his name. They never talked about it either.” he says, rounding through the ‘e’ of his first name.

“I didn’t know they existed for a long time. We were on the run by the time I did.”

The dash of the ‘A’.

“Everything I knew about them I learned in bits and pieces. It took me a while to understand it on my own. I didn’t, really, until I came to Palmetto.”

The swish of the ‘r’. 

“When she found out I’d been asking questions she told me if she ever saw a name on my arm she’d carve it out herself.”

Andrew doesn’t feel the next letter. 

“She didn’t say what would happen to them and I knew better than to ask.”

Or the one after that.

“It was just another threat. I’d rather die than have one. I’d die if I did.”

His careful touch reaches the ‘o’ before he speaks again. 

“I used to think if I just kept changing my name I’d be safe from it. If I didn’t have a real name how could it end up on someone’s skin?”

Andrew used to think that too. Technically Andrew Doe wasn’t his real name. Can’t get a name if it doesn’t exist. He dismissed that idea before long. It was stupid and inaccurate. It wasn't until he met Neil, learned his name was a lie and his true name an even bigger one, that he would think something like that again. Not that he’d admit it to himself at the time. 

He watches Neil’s fingers still on the ‘n’ when Andrew says:

“So did I.”

“About yourself?”

“Yes.”

“And about me too.”

Neil learned a lot of vital and terrible skills from his life on the run. Andrew isn’t sure if his ability to find your loose threads and pull until the truth comes out is one of them. But it is certainly terrible.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Maybe, but I’m right.”

Andrew doesn’t care to lie unless he’s lying to himself too, so unhooks his fingers from the hem of Neil’s sweatshirt and gets up to make a drink. Leaves Neil with his arms fallen where Andrew used to be.

There’s nothing sharp about him now with his hair mussed from travel, in an old number 3 sweatshirt that Andrew never wears himself and always smells like Neil. 

His smile is triumphant and soft.

\---

“How are you Andrew?” Renee asks him over her decaf cinnamon latte.

“Same as always.” 

She leans across the table between them, but only slightly.

“Neil seems to be struggling.”

Yes. Yes he does. 

“And what makes you say that?” 

She hums for a second, ordering her thoughts until they come out measured and concise.

“He’s alone there now. It’s not the same there without us. Without you. The only support system he’s ever known has scattered across the country.”

And she’s right is the thing. Neil Josten has worn many faces and all of them survivors. But survival is not the same as living. It’s not pretty. He was finally adjusting and now he’s stranded with his own memories and a bunch of little assholes with sticks. 

And then there’s the things Neil tells him over the phone in the middle of the night sometimes.

“He’s made it through worse. Neil will be fine.”

Probably. Possibly. 

“Fine for him is a very different thing.”

“I know.”

He really does.

“He’s your soulmate Andrew. He needs you.”

She doesn’t look proud or smug or surprised or vindicated when he doesn’t argue. She just looks through him and all his self-deceit. 

Renee is much sharper than most realise. They forget the knives she used to wield, the knife she used to be. She knows survival too. And she knows when to wait so that when she does strike it'll hit the most arteries. 

“Are you sure the peace corps is the right place for you?”

Renee just smiles.

\---

He knows that they are tied together. Permanently. 

He knows that they’ll be pulled back to each other one way or another, not meant to be apart. 

He knows that the loss of one would take a piece of the other. 

There’s a part of Andrew, deep down and wrapped in barbed wire where not even Andrew can touch it, that knows these things would all be true even without the ink on their skin. The same part that understands that if those things weren't true without the ink, there’d be no ink at all. 

But he doesn’t think much on these things. That way lies wasted time.

He also knows how much blood Neil has lost and shed and survived. 

He knows what Neil is capable of enduring. 

Andrew Minyard does not worry nor does he need to.

He could wait. Until Neil comes to him or gets through it on his own. He knows Neil would. Eventually.

He books his flight to South Carolina.

\---

He only spends a year in Boston and then they put it up to Andrew to decide. 

It’s the Denver coach who fights for it. Pushes them to let Andrew in the room, to make the call on how if and when he goes.

And that’s why Andrew chooses Denver.

It’s different. All new things are. But maybe it’s not bad. 

The weather is fine. 

He gets a new apartment, looks for it alone and signs for it. 

There’s a new chair that Nicky ‘convinced’ him to buy because there wasn’t enough seating space in the last apartment.

It’s forest green. Andrew curls up in it sometimes.

The kitchen has enough space for food should any idiots come knocking and Andrew keeps his previous bed. 

There’s that picture of his soulmate on the mantel piece again.

That’s new too. Soulmate. The word. For Andrew at least. 

But.

It’s true. 

Bee asked him if he’d try it and he said yes. 

So. 

There’s a picture of his soulmate on the mantel piece.

\---

It’s difficult.

From a time management perspective.

Andrew spends far too much time in airports and far too much time waiting and far too much time playing or practising hitting a ball with a big stick.

Neil spends far too much time on all those things too. Pro that he now is.

Back in the good old days when Andrew didn’t feel anything he could pretend this didn’t bother him and fool himself and everyone else if not Neil. But here he is, growing. And here he is, waiting.

Day after day.

Over the past years of living alone he’s worn his armbands less and less in the solace of his home. He sees Neil’s name every day. He may not hear his voice or see his face, but his name remains. Proof of his existence. Proof of Andrew’s.

It’s just that the dark is long in winter. It’s just that the day is too long in summer.

Neil is lonely. He doesn’t need Renee to tell him that. 

The thing about Neil Josten that people must remember but often don’t, is that if you’re not one of his Foxes or David Wymack or Andrew Minyard, he doesn’t give a fuck about you. You could die tomorrow and he won’t care unless it costs him something. 

He is loyal and ferocious and the kind of devoted that looks like barbed wire from the outside. He smiles and he laughs quietly and he will kill. For his own. And for absolutely no one else.

He’s alone without them. 

So is Andrew. 

They fly to each other as often as possible, Neil and the Foxes. Kevin, Aaron, Nicky, Andrew. Andrew and Neil. But they’re both alone most of the time. 

Neil gets a cat at Matt’s suggestion. She’s a rescue like Neil. Huge and soft like Matt. Exuberant like Nicky. Brave like Kevin. Petulant but loyal like Aaron. 

Neil completely spins out over it. 

But she helps.

Every now and again when he’s too cold and Andrew is tracing the ink on his arm, it’s not enough. There’s a voice somewhere in the back of his head that sounds like trauma, and it’s telling him that nobody could have chosen this. Every now and again he chooses Neil’s voice over the silence. 

Andrew winds back in a little bit.

It helps.

\---

He has a phone call with Bee every other Wednesday. He has a phone call with Nicky at least four times a month. He talks to Kevin. Aaron. 

He talks to Neil most days. A text if nothing else.

A phone call. 

Facetime. 

Sometimes it’s just them going about their lives in silence. Neil’s cat Sir lingering in the background, Andrew making coffee and Neil making dinner.

Today, it’s not a phone call or Facetime or a text message. 

It’s Neil sat in Andrew’s forest green chair mostly asleep, all his edges sanded soft, drinking black coffee even though he shouldn’t be at 9pm. 

There’s something different about the way Neil is holding himself. 

Andrew watches Neil move to shift his mug to his left hand, then stop himself, then lift it to his lips with his right. It makes the sleeve of his arm slide up slightly to expose his wrist. He’s not wearing his armbands.

His scars are just smudges when Andrew kneels in front of him. His blinks bright blue eyes and long lashes at Andrew, slow and weary. 

“Andrew.” he says, acknowledging and asking all at once.

But he just blinks back at Neil. Moves his hand towards Neil’s left wrist, stops just short, raises a brow. 

Neil nods. So Andrew lifts his sleeve.

03\. 

In black ink. 

Tattooed on Neil’s skin in between the neat rows of messy scaring.

“So you’ve been hanging out with Allison lately.” Andrew says, just in case he couldn’t say anything at all. 

“Maybe.”

03.

In black ink.

“Neil what is this for?”

Neil puts his mug down on the ground and leans closer to Andrew until their breaths are one and their eyes can’t hide.

“I wanted it. I chose it Andrew. I chose them both.”

“Stop it.”

“I can’t. “

“Okay.”

So he kisses Neil, ends up on the chair with him, digs his hands into Neil’s hair and Neil holds his face and it’s enough.

\---

And then one day, Andrew is pulled into his coaches office and there it is. Neil’s name. A transfer contract in progress. Neil calls that night and asks him. So Andrew asks in return:

“Is this what you want?” 

He thinks he knows the answer.

“Yes Andrew. Yes.”

Well. 

That’s settled then.

\---

She likes to sit on the forest green chair.

Andrew stares her down and she doesn’t budge. 

Neil is leaning in the kitchen doorway with him, bodies sharing heat. He’s looking at Andrew. 

“She’s trouble.” Andrew says.

Neil laughs a little, nudges Andrew’s foot with his own. Takes a sip of his coffee.

“So am I, remember?”

He doesn’t have time for this. He has a place to be today. And the cat is in his chair. 

“She needs to move so I can eat my breakfast.”

“Or you could just eat it at the table.”

“No.”

“Sure.”

Neil rolls his eyes as he says it, blue disappearing into white in a perfect representation of exasperation. But then he puts his coffee down and goes to her, gathers her up in his strong arms and kisses her on the head. She purrs, because of course she does. 

“Come on King.” He says, tone hushed and gentle. They settle on the couch and stay there.

Andrew eats his breakfast.

He woke up to coffee already made. It tastes like the brand they both like, and he knows it is because he picked it up two days ago. It was Neil who picked up the cat food the day before that. 

Some days it all reminds him of Palmetto. Routine anchored around exy and each other. But most days it doesn’t. Things are different. Settled. The future is less uncharted and more certain; they’re not so surprised anymore when they realise they have one. Less herding Foxes more herding cats. More in-state therapy and a little bit less over the phone. 

Neil himself settled into home with Andrew the second he gave him the key. But that was long before he changed teams. Now he’s as much a part of the place as the floorboards themselves. 

And just as much of a nuisance as the cats.

But when Andrew comes home tonight, so will Neil. 

Neil chose this city, this team, both of these cats, and Andrew Joseph Minyard.

When Andrew does get home that night, Neil leans against the kitchen counter and kisses Andrew. Tangles his fingers with Andrew’s. Stares. Kisses him again. Goes back to making his inappropriately timed coffee. 

He spends too much time watching Kevin’s exy highlights and Andrew throws a pillow at him from their bedroom.

Neil laughs, carries it in his arms, leans into Andrew like a magnet pulled to it’s opposite. Kisses Andrew in the doorway. 

Then he falls asleep first and King breaks into the room through the slightly open doorway. 

And then, to the sound of Neil’s quiet breathing and Kings purrs, Andrew falls into sleep without nightmares for the 18th night in a row. 

\---

Dancing and drinking and ties and Neil is in suspenders. 

He’s twirling Dan around in her bridesmaids’ dress, his sleeves rolled up, no armbands. Andrew’s name catching the light of the ballroom chandelier. The 03.

It’s mostly Foxes left. 

Nicky and Erik are both lightly drunk but fully joyous, floating around the floor together and refusing to look away from each other. Foreheads together, smiles matching.

Andrew is watching it all from his seat at the bar, cake in hand, surveying. There’s Kevin dancing with Matt. He knows where Nicky is. There’s Neil again. Suspenders. Blue eyes. Patience as Dan steps on his foot by accident and laughs. Hair smoothed back in deliberate waves of auburn. Like an ocean made of fire. Black dress pants, bowtie in deep green, dress shoes. 

There’s Kevin again. 

And there she is. Katelyn. 

But where is Aaron?

“Hey.”

Found him.

“Hey.” he replies, voice quiet and steady like Aaron’s.

Next to Andrew in his charcoal grey suit, Aaron Minyard is a doctor and adult, an innocent man, and a soulmate. 

He has grown in a different direction to Andrew. But they are still twins. They still share blood and blood spilled. 

Next to Andrew in his charcoal grey suit, Aaron Minyard is his brother.

Aaron lifts a glass to a grinning Nicky across the room, takes a sip of his whiskey, turns to Andrew.

“Good wedding. Beautiful.”

Andrew hums. Eats a bite of red velvet wedding cake.

They sit in silence for a minute or a few, two mirror images. Their silence is less visceral these days. Still. Calm. 

And then Aaron’s voice breaks it, slowly and quietly.

“Do you ever think about how different our lives are now?”

Yes. 

When he thinks of how many nights of sleep he gets now. 

When he thinks of Neil without his armbands like he is tonight. 

When he thinks about exy and how he’s still playing it. 

When he thinks about Kevin.

When he thinks about Aaron. 

When he thinks about Nicky, when he looks at him now on his wedding day. Sees him happier than Nicky himself probably could have imagined. 

(At the altar he remembered every word he wanted to say back then. Andrew knows because he remembers them too).

When he thinks about himself, still here. Still alive. Chosen. Choosing someone else.

“Sometimes.”

Of course he does. 

“I never thought we’d make it Andrew.”

“Neither did I.”

“You never could have told me that back then.”

“I almost didn’t now.”

“But you did.”

“Don’t blame me, blame Betsy.”

A beat of silence again, a sip of whiskey.

“I don’t blame you, you know, not like I used to. Things are still…complicated.”

“I know.”

“I know you do.”

Neil is watching them, subtle in that way of his that only those trained in it tend to notice. 

“Sometimes I still can’t believe that idiot almost got us all killed by the fucking Yakuza.”

Andrew takes a bite of his forgotten cake. He can’t really argue that. 

He knows Aaron is looking at Neil’s bare arms and that’s why his voice comes out like that. A little bitter still, a little awed, a little confused even now. A tiny bit relieved.

“I still don’t like him.” Aaron says, tone less complicated.

“Neither do I.”

Aaron laughs, a sound that’s almost an exhale.

“Liar.”

Then he leaves, goes to dance with Katelyn. She asks him something and he nods and they both smile and they keep smiling, closer and closer.

He spots Allison and Renee with hands intertwined, spinning and smiling. Renee wears her rainbow in the non-conflict diamond on her finger now. It’s delicate, like she wanted.

Then Neil is there. Bowtie lost somewhere. He steals a bite of Andrew’s cake right off the fork. Licks the frosting off his lip as Andrew’s eyes track the movement. 

Takes Andrew’s fingers and pulls like a question. 

So Andrew gets up and lets himself be led by Neil’s mischievous eyes. Lets himself be taken into the hallway. Let’s himself back Neil against the wall and breathe him in, no cologne just vanilla bean hair product and sweat. He kisses Neil’s neck and Neil kisses his and is triumphant as always when Andrew stutters on his next breath. Digs his fingers a little tighter around Neil’s stupid suspenders.

He feels Neil’s smile against the skin of his neck, his fingers running over Andrew’s safe places and over the lapels of his suit jacket. 

“Nice suit.” He says into Andrew’s mouth.

“Shut up.” and he’s kissing him again. 

He moves his hands to the bare skin of Neil’s arms, feels his name and number and the bravery there.

This is what he chose. This is what Andrew chose.

\--

They end up playing exy at 4am outside the hotel venue with improvised equipment, still in their formal wear. It’s an absolute mess and they’re all mostly drunk. Nicky is trying to teach Erik how to be a backliner but they keep getting distracted by each other instead.

“Still _fucking_ got it you bitches!” Allison crows. 

Neil does something impressive and then Kevin does too, grinning from ear to ear a healthy amount of drunk.

Aaron is as reluctant as Andrew but stands on their makeshift court anyway.

There are no plexiglass walls, so it’s basically lacrosse but when Andrew says so Matts scream of indignation is just not worth it.

Nicky is beside himself with happiness. 

“We are still _such_ hot shit!” he yells.

No, they’re really not.

And they give up soon after.

End up spread out on the ground, ruining their formal wear.

Andrew’s suit jacket is gone, and the top three buttons on Neil’s dress shirt are undone and he’s sweaty and vibrant and his arms are spread out wide against the ground so the stars themselves know whose name he chose. 

A life full of exy and cat hair. The right brand of coffee. Kisses and fools. Mistakes and blood and growing no matter how much it hurts. 

An apartment in Denver.

His family.

Andrew Minyard is not surviving anymore. 

He’s living. 

He’s alive. 

A life he never thought he’d get to choose.

It was full of hurt and bloodshed and aching and challenge and difficult decisions and necessities. Losing everything. Gaining it back piece by piece. 

It was the hard choice but he thinks it was the right one.

He looks at Neil, silent beside him, safe in his gaggle of Foxes. He’s smiling softly at Andrew. The taste of him and red velvet cake is still on Andrew’s tongue.

Andrew chose this too.

Neil Abram Josten is written on his skin and his bone and you’d have to cut Andrew open to remove him now.


End file.
